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SA65T10 - Sacredness is the essence of religion
Saanen, Switzerland - 1 August 1965
Public Talk 10



0:01 This is J. Krishnamurti’s tenth public talk in Saanen, 1965.
0:11 I would like to, this morning, if I may, go into something which I consider very important.
0:26 We have so far dealt with so many sides or aspects of parts, of fragments of a total life.
0:55 But it would be very important – at least, I think so – to come to the essence rather than deal with peripheral activities.
1:28 We have so far considered the activities that lie on the outskirts, on the boundaries of our thinking, of our feeling, and the various activities that go on in our daily life.
1:50 But it seems to me that it is essential to find out the essence, and from there function.
2:07 But to go into that, one must clear a great deal of the ground.
2:19 First, words and symbols are heavy with superstition, with tradition; and one has to use certain words that are loaded, unfortunately, with Christian symbolism and Hindu words and ideas and so on.
2:56 And the word, the symbol is never the thing; never the essence, never the truth.
3:08 And it would be very unfortunate if we were caught in symbolism and in words, because symbolism and the word is never the real.
3:23 The word becomes important or the symbol becomes important, like the shadow, when the real thing has disappeared, when the real thing has no substance, no validity.
3:42 And we are going to find this morning for ourselves the validity, the truth, and not be caught in the symbol or in the word.
3:58 So we must put away from our minds, if I may suggest, the inevitable meaning, the inevitable nature of symbols and words and come to some reality, which can never be grasped through word or through symbol.
4:29 Man – that is, you and I – throughout the centuries has sought something beyond himself, something as a means to either escape from this ugly, tyrannical, sorrowing world, or to compensate for this aching, miserable, confusing existence.
5:16 And for this compensation and the justification to live in this world rather sanely – if one can – one has, a human being has, out of his vanity, out of his fear, out of his anguish created an image, a personal God, a superhuman power, which makes him behave, which acts as a guiding principle.
6:04 That image is different in the Orient and in the Occident, but it is still created by the human mind; there is nothing sacred about it.
6:25 There is nothing sacred in the rituals of the West or of the East; there is nothing true; for they have been put together by man in his despair, in his torture, in his fear, in his anxiety, and what is born out of fear, out of anxiety can never lead man to truth.
7:04 They may be amusing, they may be exciting, they may give him certain inspiration, a certain sense of well-being but those rituals, those symbols, those words, those prayers have no truth behind them at all, because they are put together by human beings in utter agony.
7:36 So man has always sought, and apparently found.
7:47 So we’re going to examine, if we may, those two words: searching and finding.
8:07 We seek because of our own confusion; we seek something that is permanent because we see everything about us impermanent.
8:26 We seek a love, a comfort, a divine providence, because in ourselves there is so much confusion, so much sorrow, so much agony.
8:42 And out of this chaos, we seek; and what we find is born out of this chaos.
9:04 So one must understand this thing, that to seek and to find is not only a waste of energy, but also it is an actual hindrance, it’s an actual detriment.
9:31 Please, you may not agree with what is being said – not that you should agree or disagree – but we are inquiring into something that demands a great deal of energy, a great sensitivity, an intense awareness and attention, and so we have to put aside everything to find out: every assertion, every dogma, every sanction, all the religions throughout the world that have maintained certain formula, certain ways and tradition to find out.
10:56 And man has always sought, hoping to find something beyond his own imagination, beyond his own vanity: a God, a being, an essence, a power that will guide, help, comfort.
11:25 So we are seeking, out of the desire, to find some comfort, something that is original; but behind the urge to find out, there is this vast reservoir of man’s ignorance of himself, of his despairs, of his everlasting demand to find something permanent.
11:59 And being totally – if one is at all intelligent and aware – totally dissatisfied with this transient world, one wants something permanent, and therefore one is seeking, seeking, joining this movement, committing himself to that party, to that activity, and so he’s always active in his search.
12:38 But that search invariably leads to what is already predestined, because he will find what he is seeking; because he wants comfort, he wants permanency, he wants clarity, he wants a state of mind which will never be disturbed, which he calls peace.
13:10 So a mind that would discover what is the real, what is true, must totally end the search and the demand to find.
13:44 Because we seek because we don’t know; we seek because we are confused, we are anxious, we are miserable, we are laden with sorrow, and so we seek something outside of ourselves, in books, in teachers, in gurus, in saviours, in organised religions; and having found some comfort, some assurance, we cling to it desperately.
14:43 But that search and that finding invariably holds within it the disintegration, the decline of a mind that must be intensely active, supremely sensitive, aware and vitally energetic.
15:16 So to put an end to searching – which is put an end to sorrow – and the end of finding – which is the unfolding of one’s own mind – is the beginning and the ending of religious activity.
15:50 Because without knowing yourself, about yourself, mere search only breeds illusion.
16:04 Because human minds, human beings want more experience.
16:12 We all want experience, more and more, not only the experience which is derived through technological means, as going to Mars or discovering new galaxies, but also inwardly we want more experience, because the daily, every experience of everyday has no meaning anymore.
16:47 We have had sex, and that pleasure is repeated day-after-day and it becomes slightly monotonous, boring; and if that is not sufficient, then we want some other form of experience, social activity: the praise of a community, the fame of a world, having prestige, deriving through function status.
17:24 So we want experience; that’s why we take drugs, the LSD, which make the mind much more sensitive, much more active, and so that drug gives us wider, deeper, more intense experience.
17:50 Please, as we are talking – as we said the other day – the speaker is not important; what he says is important, because what he says is the voice of your own self.
18:26 He’s talking aloud, which is yourself; you are listening to yourself and not to the speaker; the speaker has no importance, but what has importance is that you listen through the words which the speaker is using, to listen to yourself and therefore listening becomes extraordinarily important.
19:04 To listen is to learn, and not to accumulate.
19:12 When you accumulate and listen from the knowledge of accumulation, from the knowledge of your background, you’re not listening.
19:24 It’s only when you are listening, you are learning.
19:34 You are learning about yourself, and therefore you have to listen with extraordinary care, with extraordinary attention; the care and the attention is denied when you listen, when you see yourself and justify or condemn or evaluate.
20:05 Then you’re not listening, then you’re not perceiving, seeing.
20:24 As when one sits on the bank of a river and the stream goes by, carrying all the debris of the storm, so one has to watch the movement of oneself, sitting on the bank or riding awareness and following every debris, every thought, every feeling, every intention, every motive; just watching.
21:06 And that watching is listening, not only with your ears but with your eyes, with your insight, being aware of all the values that human beings have created, being aware of the conditioning; it’s only then that you will end all seeking.
21:35 Because seeking and discovering is waste of energy.
21:46 When the mind itself is not clear, is so confused, so frightened, miserable, anxious, what is the good of seeking out of that?
22:02 Out of this chaos, what can you find except more chaos?
22:11 But when there is inward clarity, when the mind is completely inwardly not demanding, not frightened, then in that clarity there is no seeking, and therefore there is no finding.
22:40 So it is not a religious act to seek – to seek God, truth – what is a religious act is to come upon this clarity through self-awareness, self-knowing, being aware of all the intimate, secret desires, unfolding them, watching them, never correcting them, never controlling them nor indulging, but always watching; and out of that comes extraordinary clarity, sensitivity, and therefore in that there is conservation of energy.
23:49 And one must have immense energy, because energy is all action; life is energy.
24:15 When we are miserable, anxious, quarrelling, jealous, anxiety, that is also energy; when we are frightened, when we are insulted, when we are flattered, it’s also energy.
24:34 It’s also energy of a mind that’s ill, physically and inwardly.
24:43 Everything that we do, think, feel is energy.
24:51 Either we understand the dissipation of energy and therefore, naturally, out of that dissipation, there is the coming together of all energy, or we are merely struggling to put together various forms of energies which are contradictory, hoping from the peripheral to come to the essence.
25:25 Now, the essence of religion is sacredness; not the religious organisations, not the religious mind that is caught in a conditioned belief, dogma.
25:54 To that mind there is nothing sacred except the thing that it has created, put together, as God, as a ritual or the various sensations that one derives through rituals, through prayer, through worship, through devotion.
26:29 There is nothing sacred in sentimentality, in emotionalism.
26:40 So a mind that is religious, the very essence of it is sacredness, and that’s what we are going to discover this morning.
27:00 Not what is sacred, not the symbol, not the word, not the person, not the picture, not an experience – those are all juvenile – but the essence; and that demands, on the part of each one of us, an awareness that comes by understanding or by watching, by being aware of things outward.
27:51 You cannot ride the awareness, the mind cannot ride awareness without being aware of the outward things: outward behaviour, outward gestures, costume, taste, the shape and the size and the colour of the tree, of the person, of the house.
28:30 It is the same tide that goes out and that comes in, and without knowing the outward tide, you will never know what the inward tide is.
28:44 Please do listen to this. We think awareness is something mysterious to be practiced, to be got together by day-after-day talking about awareness.
28:58 You don’t come to that awareness at all.
29:05 But if one is aware of outward things: the shape of the road, the shape of the tree, the colour of the dress of another, the outlines of the mountains against the blue sky, the flower, the pain on the face of another, the ignorance, the jealousies of others, outwardly, the beauty of the world; and then, seeing that, without condemnation, without choice, then you can ride on the inner awareness, ride; there you become aware of your own reactions, of your own pettiness, of your own jealousies.
30:08 So from the outward awareness you come to the inward; but if you’re not aware of the outer, you can never possibly come to the inner.
30:23 And then, when there is this inward awareness of every activity of yourself, of your mind, of your feeling, of your body, of your thought – everything, every secret, conscious or unconscious – then out of that awareness comes clarity; and without that clarity – not induced, not put together – do what you will, you might search the heavens and the earth and the deep, you will never find what is true.
31:17 So a man who would discover what is real must have the sensitivity of awareness; not the practice of awareness; the practice of awareness only leads to habit, and habit is destructive of all sensitivity; whether it is the habit of sex, habit of drink, habit of smoke, any habit makes the mind insensitive; and a mind that is insensitive, not only dissipates energy but becomes dull.
32:13 Such a dull mind, petty mind, shallow mind, conditioned mind may take a drug, and for a second may have an astonishing experience, but it’s still a small mind.
32:31 And what we are trying… what we are doing is to put an end to the pettiness of the mind; not by gathering more information, more knowledge, listening to more music, going on… visit...
32:53 seeing beauty spots of the world and so on — it is not that at all.
33:01 What brings clarity is the self-knowing and the movement that has no restriction; it is only such a mind is the religious mind.
33:20 And the essence of religion is sacredness.
33:29 Not in the church, not in the temple, not in the mosque, not in an image.
33:39 We are talking about the essence, and not the thing which we call sacred.
33:49 And when one understands this essence of religion, which is sacred, then life has a different meaning altogether; then everything has beauty.
34:08 And beauty is the sacredness; beauty is not the thing that stimulates.
34:19 When you see a beautiful mountain… when you see a mountain, a house, a river, a valley, a flower or a face, then you say, ‘That is beautiful,’ because you are stimulated.
34:39 But the beauty of which we are talking has no stimulation whatsoever.
34:48 It’s neither in the picture nor in the symbol nor in the word nor in the music.
35:02 That beauty is the sacredness of a mind that is clear in its religiosity; and one comes upon it not desiring, wanting, longing experience.
35:27 All desire for experience must come to an end; and that’s one of the most difficult things to understand.
35:45 As we pointed out earlier, a mind that is seeking experience is still moving in the periphery, and the translation of each experience is dependant on your conditioning.
36:11 If you are a Catholic, a Protestant, a Buddhist or a Hindu, Muslim, whatever it is, or a communist, your experiences will be translated and conditioned according to your background; it’s so obvious.
36:31 So the more you demand experience, the more you’re strengthening the background; not undoing, putting an end to sorrow; it’s only an escape from sorrow.
36:51 And a clear mind has no need for experience; it is clear, a light, a thing that is the essence.
37:09 What need it have experience? It is what it is.
37:21 So through self-knowing – not the knowing of another, whether he’s the teacher, a psychologist or a philosopher or a clever writer, but knowing for oneself about oneself – then, out of that, comes clarity.
37:55 And, as we said the other day, without love and the understanding of death, there is no sacredness.
38:21 Because… You know, it’s one of the most marvellous things in life to discover something unexpectedly, spontaneously, without premeditation, without preparing; to come upon something instantly and see the beauty of it, the sacredness of it, the reality of it.
38:56 But a mind that is seeking, wanting to find, is never in that position at all.
39:14 And love is not a thing to be cultivated. Love, like humility, cannot be put together. It’s only the vain man that attempts to be humble; the proud man that seeks to put away his pride through humility, but that act is still vanity.
39:52 So there must be this quality of humility to listen and therefore to learn.
40:05 And a mind that has understood this nature of humility never follows, never obeys.
40:19 How can that which is completely negative, empty, obey anything, follow anything?
40:33 So a mind that has… out of this clarity knows what love is, then it must also be aware of the nature and the structure of death.
40:53 Because if we don’t die to everything of yesterday, to the past, then the mind is still caught in the shadows, in the memories, in the longings, in the conditioning of a human mind; so there is no clarity.
41:16 And to die to yesterday easily, voluntarily, without justification, without argument, demands energy.
41:33 And argument, justification, choice is waste of energy, and therefore one never dies to the many yesterdays so that the mind can be made fresh, anew.
41:48 And when there is clarity, then there follows love with its gentleness, a quality of humility, and there comes also this freedom from the past through death.
42:13 And out of this comes creation.
42:21 Not self-expression, which is called creation; not putting paint together on a piece of canvas or writing a few words or many words in a book, or in the kitchen making bread, or conceiving a child.
42:49 That is not creation. There is creation when there is love and death.
42:58 And a mind that does not know creation – and that creation can only come when there is dying every day to everything, so that there is no accumulation as memory.
43:15 Obviously there must be a little accumulation of your clothes, house and property; I’m not talking of that, but the inward sense of accumulation, possession; and from which possession there is domination, authority, conformity, obedience, and such a mind is not a free mind.
43:42 It’s only the free mind which has known what death is and what love is, to that mind alone there is creation.
43:57 And in this state, the mind is religious; in this state there is sacredness.
44:13 To me, that word has extraordinary meaning.
44:22 Please, I’m not doing propaganda for that word, nor trying to convince you, try to make you feel or experience, through that word, reality — you can’t.
44:46 Unless one has gone through all this, non-verbally but actually; actually dying to everything known inside you: your memories, your remembrances, your pleasures.
45:09 And when there is no jealousy, nor the torture of despair, no envy, no greed, then you know what love is and then you will come upon that thing which is called sacred.
45:32 Therefore, the essence of religion is sacredness.
45:42 And that… once that comes into being, it’s like the river – towns may pollute it, if they don’t pollute it too much – like a river that cleanses itself as it goes along; within a few miles, it is again clean, fresh, pure, after a city has polluted it.
46:17 So once the mind comes upon this sacredness, then every movement, every act is a cleansing act; it is a purifying… it is… the mind through that act is making itself innocent, and therefore it is not accumulating; and therefore such a mind which has discovered this sacredness is in constant revolution; not the economic revolution or social revolution, but this revolution which is constantly, endlessly cleansing, purifying itself and therefore acting; not upon an idea, not based on some formula, but as the river, with tremendous volume of water behind it, moves, flows, cleanses itself, so does a mind that has come upon this religious sacredness.
47:40 We are going to have discussions, the day after tomorrow morning, at ten thirty – isn’t it, day after…?
48:11 Yes; on Wednesday… Oh, I beg your pardon; on Wednesday, 4th – but we can start those discussions this morning.
48:35 To discuss – really discuss, not you assert and I assert; you stick to your opinion and I stick to my dogma or to my experience or to my knowledge – to really discuss, both of us must be free, intelligent, exchange.
49:01 To discuss is not to share my or your experience; there is no sharing at all; there is only the beauty, the truth, which you and I can’t share; it is there.
49:22 And to discuss intelligently and proceed needs a certain quality of inquiry; therefore, you must be free to inquire, not hold on to your opinion, to your experience, to the sanction of a church or a party, political or otherwise.
49:57 And to discuss intelligently, there must be a quality of not only affection but hesitation.
50:13 You know, unless you hesitate, you can’t proceed.
50:37 It isn’t a drive, it is an inquiry, hesitating discovery, step-by-step; and then you find out for yourself; then you need follow nobody, then you need to discuss with no-one, then you need not ask for correction or for confirmation of your discovery.
51:17 And all that needs a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity.
51:28 After saying that, I hope we have not stopped you from asking questions.
51:35 (Laughter) You know, it’s like talking things over together as two friends; neither asserting, neither trying to dominate the other; each talking easily, affably, in a sense of friendly companionship to discover.
52:12 Then in that… with that state of mind, we do discover; and I assure you, what you discover is very, very little; what you discover has very little importance, but it is important to discover.
52:36 After discovering, keep going. What is detrimental is to stay with what you have discovered, and then your mind is dead, finished.
52:54 But if what you have discovered you die to the moment you discover it, then you can flow like the stream, like a river that has abundance of water.
53:16 Questioner: I’d like to ask you a question.
53:44 You advocate, among other things, annihilation of one’s internal environment every day, so that it may be – if I understand it correctly – recreated every day, and you don’t acquire useless things. Why...?
53:48 K: I’m afraid I can’t hear what you’re saying.
53:49 Q: Sorry.
53:50 K: There’s too much noise somewhere. Will you switch off that, sir? Ecco!
53:53 Q: You advocate one annihilates one’s internal environment each day, so that it may be recreated each day, so that one is fresh each day, without an accumulation of useless things or experiencing or being. Why do you say this? What is the purpose of this?
54:11 Why do you find it useful?
54:19 K: The lady says I am advocating – which I’m not – that one must liquidate the environment within one.
54:38 She says, ‘Why do you advocate it?
54:45 What is its use?’ Right, madame? Is that what you ask?
54:48 Q: Yes, that’s what I was asking.
54:59 K: You know, the cup is useful only when it is empty.
55:13 And when we are… when our inward nature and mind is clouded, cluttered up with…
55:22 – doesn’t matter; with anything – with pleasant or unpleasant experiences, or knowledge or the pattern of behaviour or formulas, it is never empty.
55:36 It’s only the mind that is empty totally that can bring about a new creation… that can… not…
55:49 Sorry. It’s only when the mind is totally empty, a creation can take place.
55:58 And all creation is always new, and therefore the mind then is constantly fresh, young, innocent; it doesn’t repeat and therefore create habits.
56:21 I do not know if you have not noticed; you may have a problem, over which you have thought a great deal, worried about it, like a dog chewing over a bone; and you have investigated, gone into it, and you couldn’t find an answer, either mathematical or psychological.
56:58 Then you let it alone, go away from it, take a walk; and suddenly, out of that emptiness, comes the answer.
57:10 It must have happened to hundreds of us. Now, how does this take place?
57:38 The mind has been active within its own limitation about that problem, and when you have not found the answer and put that problem aside, your mind becomes somewhat quiet, somewhat empty, somewhat still; and with that stillness and emptiness… or rather, in that stillness and emptiness, the problem is resolved.
58:19 So when the environment, the inward environment, the inward commitments, the inward memories, the inward secrecies, the agonies, when one dies to all that, each minute, then there is an emptiness in which alone a new thing can take place.
58:54 And we are not advocating it; we’re not doing propaganda for that emptiness — good God!
59:13 We are only saying that, unless that emptiness comes into being, we shall continue with our sorrow, with our anxiety, with our despair, and activities that bring greater and more confusion.
59:33 And to bring about a different world, a different human being and therefore a different society, there must be the ending of sorrow; and therefore, with the ending of that sorrow, there is a new life.
59:51 We shall continue on Wednesday.